


Bird Among The Clouds

by ClockworkDinosaur



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 14:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7271473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkDinosaur/pseuds/ClockworkDinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isn't death its own kind of freedom?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bird Among The Clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Vent writing sorta, because taking out my emotions on fictional characters is easy.

Elizabeth was fourteen when she first picked up Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_. She knew the story, of course. Literature professors and other learned men talked about it in many of her textbooks, but she had never read the play herself. She had no idea how it had ended up in her tower- the majority of her books were religious texts, or at the very least wholesome and Godly stories, while the rest were educational in some way. A tragedy, and one with such an upsetting ending and a plot full of teenaged lust, murder, and suicide wasn't something she expected to find on one of her shelves. She had the very distinct feeling she shouldn't have had it in the first place.

Casually, she set it on the pile of books she took to her room, set the other books on her bedside table, and read the play in less than an hour, her heart fluttering with the giddy feeling of rebellion as she did so.

She finished the book with a deep frown. Her heart ached for the star-crossed lovers, and she put the book in the back of her drawer, swearing to herself that she would never pick it up again.

A few weeks passed before she did read it again. Juliet, trapped in a life that she didn't choose, until she's saved by a boy who steals her heart. She planned to escape with him, until the tragic death of both her and her beloved, both at their own hand.

If the hundreds of religious texts in her library told her anything, it was that suicide was a sin. Among other things of course, but every word she read was clear on the expected retribution for someone who took their own life.

She felt that she should have hated or pitied Juliet, but instead Elizabeth felt that she understood her. Not in the way that she had loved and lost, but in the way that she had taken a chance at freedom.

For years, Elizabeth believed that Juliet had failed. She had died, and that meant freedom was lost to her.

Elizabeth was seventeen when she came to the conclusion that Juliet _had_ gotten her freedom. She was no longer tied to her unwanted betrothed, no longer held back by her family and what they expected of her. The thought came to her as she laid in bed, Songbird's shrill shrieks that had stopped her hand in terror and made her miss her chance at picking her tower's door still echoing in her head. She stared at the wall, her light blue eyes unblinking as she frowned at the lavish wallpaper.

Juliet, in a way, was free. No more feeling trapped. Mo more feeling alone. No more fear. No more.

Elizabeth sat up, making her way from her bedroom into her well-stocked library. She stopped in front of the expansive window, the thick clouds drifting alongside the city, the evening light filtering through them and seeming to light them from within.

The clouds seemed close enough to touch. They were enticingly close, only an arm's length away, glowing pleasantly and softly floating on the warm summer breeze.

Elizabeth paused for a moment, listening. The telltale whistling and flapping of massive wings that signaled the nearby presence of her winged guardian was curiously absent. She took the chance, opening up her window widely and stepping up onto the thin ledge. Her booted feet barely fit on the thin piece of wood, her toes hovering over empty air. She clung to the sides of the window with white knuckles. Wind tossed her dark hair around her face, caressing her skin gently as the city moved through the brilliant, evening light streaked sky. Patchwork land stretched below her, miles away, the empty air between her and the earth below taking her breath away.

She laughed, the sound carried from her lips on the wind. Tentatively, she let go of the side of the window with one hand, reaching for the clouds that had seemed so close from behind the closed window, but were now just out of reach of her outstretched fingers. Elizabeth brought her hand back, defeated, but stopped before she went back inside. She took a deep breath.

This was the closest she had ever been to outside, to real freedom. Tears were only momentary reprises from her life, but this was real and so infuriatingly close. The thought of turning around, of closing the window and going back to her books under the watchful eye of Songbird caused her stomach to drop more sickeningly than the thousand foot plummet below her. She continued to stand, her legs tiring from the strain of balancing on the thin windowsill, but she didn't move. The clouds, undisturbed by the girl and the tower she had never left, continued to glide by just out of reach.

Still, Elizabeth reached out again, letting her entire body lean out the window, one last useless grasp for the clouds that she knew were too far away to feel. Her entire weight was being held back by one arm.

She looked down, the patchwork land below her shadowed by the clouds next to her and the city of Columbia itself.

Slowly, deliberately, she let her grip on the window relax.

If she couldn't reach the clouds, she knew she could at least reach the ground.

She held her breath.

The clouds continued to roll by.

She let go.

 


End file.
